The autumn leaves are falling like rain. Although my neighbors are all barbarians and you, you are a thousand miles away, there are always two cups at my table.

T’ang Dynasty poem

Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn, a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter. If your mind isn't clouded by unnecessary things, this is the best season of your life.

~ Wu-men ~

Friday, May 12, 2017

Yoga for Martial Arts

There was a post on BJJ Notebook a while back about learning Yoga to improve one's BJJ. Learning Yoga could probably improve your practice of any martial art.Below is an excerpt from the post, as well as a video. The full post may be read here.

I give yoga a go for 7 days to see if it makes a difference to my Jiujitsu
I’ve heard it said time after time that yoga and Brazilian jiujitsu are made for each other, so, as an ‘over the hill’ BJJ practitioner (40+) I decided it was time I found out what yoga could do for me. Proper yoga classes are one option, but since all my free time is taken up with work, family life and BJJ I don’t have time to go to them, so I needed to look for something I could do from home.

It turns out that there’s a website just for people like me. No, it’s not Tinder. It’s Yoga for BJJ and it offers a yoga system that’s specifically designed for BJJ practitioners who feel stiff and uncomfortable after rolling and want to feel better. To access the site, which has over 100 yoga videos, you need to subscribe for $17 a month, but the first month is only $7, and they offer to refund you if you don’t find it useful. Admittedly that sounds like a good deal, but since I am your typical inflexible and stiff male who went to a few yoga classes about 10 years ago and hasn’t done any since, I decided I needed to look into another option first.

I discovered that Yoga for BJJ offer a free 20 minute introductory session (i) on YouTube. I decided it was probably worth my time just repeating their free class once a day for a week, and saving the website trial until I could get more out of it. You see, finding the time to do yoga in my day is also an issue – I have a job, 2 kids, BJJ and freelance writing to fit into my busy schedule, so I needed to find out if I could even make time for yoga..